The two pose as a married couple and grow close, despite agreeing that in their line of work feelings can get people killed. Marianne, who is trusted by the Germans, secures Max an invitation to the party where they plan to conduct the assassination. On the day itself, they have sex inside a car in the middle of a desert sandstorm, knowing that they might not survive. However, the mission goes well and they both escape. Max asks Marianne to come with him to London and be his wife. The two get married, settle down in Hampstead, and have a baby girl named Anna.

A year later, Max learns from the Special Operations Executive that Marianne is suspected of being a German spy, having adopted her identity after the real Marianne was killed in France. In order to test their suspicions, SOE run a "blue dye" operation: Max is ordered to write down a piece of false intelligence at home, where Marianne can find it. If the information is picked up from intercepted German transmissions, Max must personally execute her, or be hanged for treason. Max is told otherwise to act normally.

Defying orders, Max visits a former colleague named Guy Sangster who knew Marianne but, blind from a wartime injury, cannot confirm her identity. He reveals that the resistance fighter Paul Delamare worked with Marianne in France and would be able to identify her. Max seeks out a young pilot named Adam Hunter, gives him a photograph and instructs him to ask Delamare whether she really is Marianne. Max's commanding officer Frank Heslop informs him that Hunter was killed while waiting on the ground for the answer. Max also hears that this whole operation might be a test, before he is given a vital job in the run-up to D-Day.

Max takes the place of a Lysander pilot and flies to France to meet with Delamare, who, it transpires, is being held at the local police station. Max and the resistance break into the jail. Delamare is drunk, but remembers that Marianne was a beautiful pianist.

Back in England, Max takes Marianne to a local pub and demands she play the piano. Marianne cannot. She admits she is a spy and forwarded the "blue dye" message which Max left in plain view. She claims her feelings for Max are genuine and that she and her child were being threatened by German spies in London, including the woman who lives around the corner and often looks after Anna.

Max, unwilling to kill his wife, tells her they need to leave before the SOE catches them. He kills Marianne's handlers and tries to flee the country via airplane, but Heslop intercepts them before they can escape. Marianne tells Max that she loves him, asks him to take care of Anna, then shoots herself. Heslop orders the soldiers present to report that Max executed Marianne as per his orders, so that Max himself will not be punished.

After the war, Max moves to the ranch in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, that was always his ambition, and raises Anna. The film ends with Marianne reading the letter that she had earlier written to her daughter, anticipating that one day her real identity would be uncovered.

Release

Box office

Allied grossed $40.1 million in the United States and Canada and $79.4 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $119.5 million, against a production budget of $85 million.[3]

Allied opened alongside Moana, Rules Don't Apply and Bad Santa 2 and was expected to gross around $15 million in its opening weekend and $20–25 million over its first five days from 3,160 theaters.[15][16] The film ended up grossing $12.7 million in its opening weekend (a five-day total of $17.7 million), finishing 4th at the box office.[17]

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, Allied has an approval rating of 60% based on 207 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Allied has its moments, but doesn't quite achieve epic wartime romance status - a disappointment made more profound by the dazzling talent assembled on either side of the camera."[18]Metacritic reports a normallized score of 60 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B", on an A+ to F scale.[20]

Writing for Deadline.com, Pete Hammond stated that "Screenwriter Steven Knight has crafted a nifty story that isn’t just a mere imitation of something you could imagine Ingrid Bergman and William Holden doing, even though wearing a certain hat in one scene Cotillard looks exactly like Bergman in the 1943 classic Casablanca. This one has all the requisite trappings including Nazis, bombed-out cities, foreign intrigue and impossibly good-looking stars."[21]

Stephanie Zacharek of TIME Magazine, stated that "Even within this highly synthetic world, Pitt and Cotillard give sturdy, coded performances that feel naturalistic, not phony: They understand clearly that their chief mission is to tap the tradition of melodrama, and they take it seriously. Somehow, almost incomprehensibly, it all works. Allied looks old but smells new, and the scent is heady."[22] Eric Eisenberg from CinemaBlend gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing, "Pitt is given what can be called the meatier part, as Max's raw nerves are fully exposed throughout the film as he tries to learn the truth about his wife -- but Cotillard's part is the more subtle and challenging, perfectly engulfing Marianne with an enigmatic air that perpetually keeps the audience guessing. They're heavy turns, but Pitt and Cotillard prove again why they're two of the best in the business."[23]

Rex Reed from New York Observer, gave the film 4 out of 4 stars saying, "Beautiful, bold and blazing with sex and suspense, Allied is a gorgeously photographed, intensely romantic, action-packed film by the great director Robert Zemeckis with two titanic star performances by Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard that delivers something for everyone. If you love classic movies and their potential to sweep you up into a world outside of your own experience, this one will rock your world."[24]

Reviewing for Movies & Drinks the 2017 Allied Blu-ray release, Paul Mavis wrote that although Allied's extensive CGI is at first visually interesting, it ultimately creates a "dead air, black box" feel that serves no purpose: "Almost none of Allied feels real, which is of course ironic when that’s the whole crux of screenwriter Stephen Knight’s story: what is real and unreal in a romance born out of deliberate subterfuge and lies? I wish Zemeckis was smart enough to make his love of technology actually serve this conceit of reality versus deliberate fabrication, to create an environment that was just as untrustworthy as his characters. However, he seems to be using CGI here not to comment on the story’s central theme, but rather just to save money and to avoid shooting on location."[25]